WASHINGTON  She's a mother of three young children who thinks the government needs to spend more money on education, child care and homeland security. To her, President Bush's plan to create private Social Security accounts represents an "abandonment" of seniors. A member of Planned Parenthood, she supports gay rights. "I'm liberal," says Debbie Wasserman Schultz, 38. "I'll say it out loud."

He grew up watching his father try to run a small business and thinks that taxes and regulations have stifled entrepreneurs. To him, the president's proposed Social Security overhaul represents a way to keep the retirement system alive for the next generation. A member of the National Rifle Association, he thinks judges who allow same-sex unions should be impeached. "I'm a social and economic conservative," says Patrick McHenry, 29. "I'm pro-life, pro-gun and anti-gay marriage."

They're both here to represent America. Or, at least, their little piece of it.

McHenry and Wasserman Schultz, two of the 50 freshmen who will be sworn into the new Congress on Tuesday, personify its seemingly irreconcilable differences. Committed in their beliefs and popular in their districts (McHenry won his race with 64% of the vote; Wasserman Schultz with 70%), they have diametrically opposed views of what the voters were telling them about where to take the country.

McHenry, a Republican, sees the November election as "a mandate for conservative change." Wasserman Shultz, a Democrat, couldn't agree less. "There was no mandate" in an election in which the president's opponent, Sen. John Kerry, won 48% of the vote, she says. "Half the country agreed with us."

Demographically, the 109th Congress is the most diverse ever, with record numbers of women and racial and ethnic minorities. Ideologically, it's as divided as the nation. Find your elected officials

SENATE HIGHLIGHTS

This is the first time two Hispanics have served in the Senate. Barack Obama is only the third African-American elected to the Senate (Republican Edward Brooke and Democrat Carol Mosley Braun were the others). 97 senators hold at least a bachelor's degree, 20 earned master's degrees, 57 have law degrees, four have medical degrees and three were Rhodes Scholars.

Republicans return to Washington with bigger majorities than they had in the last session of Congress. In the House, the GOP has its biggest margin since 1928. But Democrats still have enough votes to be a formidable opposition, particularly in the Senate, where the rules allow a minority of members to filibuster a bill, killing it by preventing it from coming up for a vote.

The third Congress of George Bush's presidency could prove the most difficult for him to manage.

Four years ago, the political honeymoon that new presidents traditionally enjoy on Capitol Hill may have been enhanced in Bush's case. That's because leaders of both parties were determined not to let controversy surrounding the 2000 presidential election — the first in more than a century in which the victor won the Electoral College but not the popular vote — mushroom into a constitutional crisis.

Two years later, a new Congress convened with memories of Sept. 11, 2001, still fresh and a buildup to war in Iraq underway. Partisanship was suppressed in favor of patriotism.

This time, Bush has an ambitious but controversial legislative agenda: funding for the war in Iraq, the overhaul of Social Security, a rewrite of the tax code and a likely Supreme Court nomination. Achieving those goals means treading a tricky political path. Conservative Republicans are eager to press their conservative agenda; Democrats adamantly oppose much of it.

HOUSE HIGHLIGHTS

Sibling act: Republican brothers Mario and Lincoln Diaz-Balart of Florida and Democratic sisters Linda and Loretta Sanchez of California serve in the House.Sibling act II: Democrats Ken and John Salazar serve in the House and Senate respectively, as do Democrats Sandy (House) and Carl (Senate) Levin of Michigan. 396 representatives have at least a bachelor's degree, 121 earned master's degrees, 171 have law degrees, 13 hold medical degrees, one was a Fulbright Scholar, another a Marshall Scholar. 235 members were once state legislators.

But sweeping legislative changes historically require support from both parties. Indeed, Bush's major first-term accomplishments — from support for the war in Iraq to tax cuts to an education accountability law — drew bipartisan support.

Does Congress have any motivation to patch over its ideological differences? The newcomers, flush with excitement about their new jobs and the new colleagues that they have been meeting at congressional orientation sessions, insist that bipartisanship is a priority.

Mike Conaway of Texas, a newly elected House Republican, says he's making a systematic effort to befriend Democratic freshmen. "Perhaps as each of us move up in leadership, we'll be able to use those relationships to work for what's in the best interests of America," he says.

Wasserman Shultz is eager to meet House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas. "I'm not only going to gravitate to people who think like me," she says.

But there are already signs it won't be easy for Republicans and Democrats to find middle ground. Sen.-elect John Thune, R-S.D., says he's all for compromises, but believes they must be found "right of center." Sen.-elect Ken Salazar, D-Colo., bluntly told Bush during a courtesy call the nine Senate freshmen paid at the White House that he should reach out to Democrats. "I told the president ... that in order for him to live up to his statements on bipartisanship, it was important for him to be inclusive," Salazar says.

Just how difficult will it be to shape a national agenda is evident from a look at the disparate political agendas of some of the newest members:

For ideological opposites, Wasserman Schultz and McHenry have a lot in common.

Both are political whiz kids who were elected to their state legislatures at age 26, besting party elders by knocking on more doors.

Since then, both have won favor with the political donor community.

Wasserman Schultz raised so much money that she was able to give hundreds of thousands away to other Democrats.

McHenry won key backing from the Club for Growth, a group that backs Republicans who are anti-tax and pro-free trade.

"What we liked about him was that he seemed young, brash and conservative," club president Steve Moore said.

Wasserman Schultz has been described as "a flaming liberal" by Florida state Senate President Jim King, a Republican friend.

Her constituents, who are packed into a densely populated, 218-square-mile district that stretches from Miami Beach north to Fort Lauderdale, include a large gay population.

The Miami-Fort Lauderdale area has one of the highest concentrations of same-sex couples in the country, according to Gary Gates, an Urban Institute demographer who co-wrote The Gay and Lesbian Atlas.

McHenry, whose first job out of college was at NotHillary.com, an unsuccessful online effort to derail the 2000 election of Hillary Rodham Clinton as a New York senator, represents a sprawling 3,362 square-mile district in western North Carolina.

More than half the people in his district live outside city limits.

It has a higher concentration of blue-collar workers than any other congressional district in the nation.

McHenry says he had a "nice conversation" with Wasserman Schultz during freshman orientation.

He does not rule out the possibility of some cooperative ventures.

"I'm a strong supporter of Israel, as is congresswoman Wasserman Schultz," he says.

"As liberal as she is and as conservative as I am, we can come together."

Martinez and Salazar represent the diversity of the nation's fastest-growing voting bloc.

Martinez, 58, is a Hispanic immigrant. He arrived in the USA when he was 15, a refugee from communist Cuba. Salazar, 49, comes from a Hispanic family that has lived in Colorado since before it was a state. He grew up without electricity or running water in a mountain farmhouse near Colorado's border with New Mexico.

Neither would be in Congress without the support of another important minority group: voters who are neither rabidly Republican nor rabidly Democrat. Their states are not reliably red or blue.

The November election results underscore the point: Salazar is replacing a Republican, Martinez a Democrat.

The Senate's first Hispanic members in 25 years, Martinez and Salazar both say they hope to collaborate on some bills. They're also likely to butt heads.

Martinez campaigned in favor of Bush's plan to give Americans the option of managing a portion of their Social Security retirement accounts themselves. "I think it's the wave of the future," he says.

Salazar is dubious about the idea, which he thinks will increase the nation's debt. "I will listen," he says. "But I am lukewarm."

Martinez wants to end the Senate's "obstruction and filibuster" of some of Bush's judicial nominees. He doesn't think it's fair for a minority of senators to block a vote on a judge.

Salazar says he'll oppose any Republican effort to do away with filibusters for judicial nominations. Senators' right to block controversial measures and nominations "has historically been part of our system of checks and balances," he says.

Though they come from opposite ends of the political spectrum, both Conaway and Green owe their House seats to a conservative Texas Republican: DeLay.

Normally, congressional district lines are redrawn once every 10 years, after the Census is released. But DeLay successfully pushed for a second redrawing of his state's congressional map after Republicans took control of the state Legislature in 2002. The Legislature produced a map that elected five new Republicans.

Green, 57, won the only new Democratic district with a constituency that he describes as one of the most diverse in the nation: 38% of the voting age population is black, 33% Hispanic and 13% Asian. Green, the former head of the Houston NAACP, won with 72% of the vote.

Conaway, 56, got 77% in a semi-rural West Texas district that is bigger than five New England states. It includes the Permian Basin, a storied oil-producing region that was the scene of the popular high school football movie, Friday Night Lights. "It's pro-family, pro-life, pro-guns, Middle America," Conaway says. One of just five accountants in the new Congress, he is a former business partner of Bush. They worked together on oil ventures in the 1980s.

Conaway favors Bush's plan for private Social Security accounts. Green is non-committal. In his district, he says, "We have people who receive Social Security not as supplemental income but as their only income. If they don't have Social Security, they don't have."

They are the celebrities of their freshman class: For Republicans, Thune is a giant-killer, having knocked off Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle by less than one percentage point in a campaign that broke all records for political spending in South Dakota. Obama is just the third African American ever elected to the Senate, and his 70% to 27% victory over Republican Alan Keyes in Illinois was one of the few bright spots for Democrats in November.

Both are 43 — relative youngsters in the Senate, where the average age is 60. Both are worried about the rising cost of health care and the strains that the war in Iraq is putting on families of reservists in their states. But their political philosophies and their constituencies couldn't be more different.

Obama, a liberal, comes from a reliably Democratic state where Kerry bested Bush, 55% to 45%. Illinois is home to 12.4 million people, 15% black and 12% Hispanic. Only 15% of the population lives in a rural setting. Thune hails from a state that's home to 775,000 people, 89% of whom are white and half of whom do not live in a city. Bush beat Kerry there, 60% to 38%.

Prompted by a question from USA TODAY, each of the two new Senate stars invited the other to his home state. Asked where he'd take Obama to explain his constituents and his views, Thune proposed an Indian reservation, a ranch and "a community in the Black Hills where people are culturally conservative and make a living off the land."

Obama wants Thune to see a black neighborhood on Chicago's South Side and a downstate manufacturing town where jobs are leaving and "55-year-olds are having to compete with kids for $7-an-hour jobs at Wal-Mart."

Politicians on both sides of the nation's political divide say that some bridge-building will be essential if the 109th Congress is to achieve anything in the next two years. "Our task is not to shove our views down the throats of the losers but to see if we can arrive at common ground," Obama says.

Pragmatism plays as much a part in that resolve as altruism. Unless Senate Republican leaders change the chamber's rules to eliminate the minority party's ability to filibuster judicial nominations — something even some GOP senators oppose — it will take 60 votes to confirm the next Supreme Court justice. And even if they have the votes, Republicans already are signaling that they don't want to risk sweeping changes in the tax code or Social Security without some political cover from their left.

"Some of these big ticket items like tax reform and Social Security reform are going to take bipartisan consensus," Thune says. "The enormity of these undertakings is going to require some bipartisanship."